The Apotheosis of Queen Anne

In 1703, Queen Anne commissioned Antonio Verrio to paint one of the most important unfinished rooms at Hampton Court Palace: the Queen's Drawing Room. The Queen's Apartments had been left unfinished and unfurnished after the death of Mary II in 1694; Anne intended them to be used by her consort, Prince George of Denmark, and the Drawing Room, centrally positioned on the East Front overlooking the formal gardens, was intended as its decorative focus. Verrio's work at Hampton Court represents his last major commission before his death in 1707, and the Queen's Drawing Room was his last completed mural scheme. The separate scenes on the ceiling and three walls are painted in the fashionable illusionistic style of the Baroque age, with the room transformed into a marble hall, open to the sky; they recognise Britain's emerging dominance over land and sea, a process catalysed during the time it took Verrio to paint the room, with the 1704 military victories at Blenheim and Gibraltar.

Queen Anne is depicted on the ceiling as Divine Justice, crowned by Neptune and Britannia, and blessed by a pair of doves representing the Holy Spirit. She is attended by allegorical figures representing the other Cardinal Virtues - Fortitude, Prudence and Temperance, and surrounded by Peace, Fame, the Morning Star (heralding the dawn of a new age), Victory, the Three Graces, Vigilance, Time revealing Truth, and the Olympian gods and goddesses Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Juno, Apollo and Diana. The design is a triumphal celebration of Anne's virtuous qualities as a Christian ruler, and her supremacy over all.

The eight subsidiary monochrome cartouches around the central design describe (in green tones) the gods Pluto, Persephone and Ceres, and (in pinkish tones) three scenes from the story of The School of Love or The Education of Cupid and one scene above the west wall showing The Choice of Hercules (between Virtue and Pleasure). These further develop the ideas of Queen Anne as a virtuous ruler dedicated to her nation.